PubMed:
Provider: NLM
Database: PubMed (National Library of Medicine), https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
Date(s) Searched: October 28, 2026
Language: English
Publication types excluded: Comment, Editorial, Letter, Case Reports, Preprint
Final count: 607 (line 10)
Search Terms:

No. | Query | Results
1 | "Chocolate"[Mesh] OR "Cacao"[Mesh] | 4,796
2 | chocolate*[tiab] OR cocoa[tiab] OR cacao[tiab] OR flavanol*[tiab] OR epicatechin[tiab] | 20,343
3 | 1 OR 2 | 20,721
4 | "Hypertension"[Mesh] OR "Blood Pressure"[Mesh] | 571,185
5 | hypertensi*[tiab] OR prehypertensi*[tiab] OR "blood pressure"[tiab] OR "arterial pressure"[tiab] OR systolic[tiab] OR diastolic[tiab] | 1,000,883
6 | 4 OR 5 | 1,142,480
7 | 3 AND 6 | 673
8 | "Comment"[Publication Type] OR "Editorial"[Publication Type] OR "Letter"[Publication Type] OR "Case Reports"[Publication Type] OR "Preprint"[Publication Type] | 4,884,955
9 | 7 NOT 8 | 627
10 | 9 AND english[la] | 607

Final query as run through NCBI E-utilities (line 10):
(((("Chocolate"[Mesh] OR "Cacao"[Mesh]) OR (chocolate*[tiab] OR cocoa[tiab] OR cacao[tiab] OR flavanol*[tiab] OR epicatechin[tiab])) AND (("Hypertension"[Mesh] OR "Blood Pressure"[Mesh]) OR (hypertensi*[tiab] OR prehypertensi*[tiab] OR "blood pressure"[tiab] OR "arterial pressure"[tiab] OR systolic[tiab] OR diastolic[tiab]))) NOT ("Comment"[Publication Type] OR "Editorial"[Publication Type] OR "Letter"[Publication Type] OR "Case Reports"[Publication Type] OR "Preprint"[Publication Type])) AND english[la]

AI-use statement:
The PubMed search strategy was drafted with the PICO search builder. It used the large language model claude-opus-5-5 (Anthropic; accessed October 28, 2026) to propose search concepts and terms from the review question. The tool made 1 call to the model at high effort (the draft); claude-opus-5-5 was requested and answered it. A refusal fallback was enabled (had the model declined a request, the API could have run it again on another model Anthropic recommends); it was not used. Every MeSH heading, Supplementary Concept and publication type the strategy searches was checked against NLM MeSH (id.nlm.nih.gov) before use: 9 valid. Each numbered line was run in PubMed through NCBI E-utilities on October 28, 2026, and PubMed's own diagnostics (phrases not found, ignored words, lost truncation) were checked. A searcher must review the strategy before it is used. The prompts, the model output and every version are in the provenance file (JSON export).

Review question: The effect of dark chocolate on hypertension in adults
Run f71f9b3b-6b32-401d-935a-bf1d3ef18791, exported October 29, 2026 from the PICO search builder.